MORFORD: 10 ways to blow your tax rebate

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 5/2/8 | Mark Morford

[SmithL]

Gas, video games, meditation, booze. What, you were planning on paying bills? As if --

Here's the bad news: Your little recession-deflecting tax rebate? No rebate at all. Not even close.

It's more like this: You've been continuously mugged and beaten and robbed blind for the past seven years straight, and as you lay there on the cold, hard economic ground, bleeding and gasping and wondering what the hell happened to your vacation time and your health care plan and your mortgage payment, your attackers scoff and leer and toss a couple of bloodstained nickels on your pulverized face and mutter, here sucker, have some bus fare, and then they cackle and stomp away with all your loot and dignity and hope, back to the White House from whence they came.

What, too harsh? Not really. It's a lovely feeling, made even more sweetly ironic by the fact that Congress will likely soon shove through another $108 billion in war funds like a giant gallstone through our collective fiscal urethra. Right there, that's about 500 bucks for each and every adult human in America, baristas and Baptists and NASCAR fans alike.

Do you see? Your "economic stimulus" check is meaningless, an empty gesture, a trifling crumb of recompense after robbing you blind via insane gas prices, infrastructure meltdowns, massive failed wars that aren't really wars. Thanks for the bogus check, Dubya, now where can I buy a sliver of our missing national dignity? Oh, that's right.

So then. Here are your bloody nickels, America. Think of it as a "recession whippit," because trust me, its quickie high won't last long. What will you do with it? Pay off the porn bill? Hit the Vegas strip?...

[Billthedrill]

You've been continuously mugged and beaten and robbed blind for the past seven years straight, and as you lay there on the cold, hard economic ground, bleeding and gasping and wondering what the hell happened to your vacation time and your health care plan and your mortgage payment, your attackers scoff and leer and toss a couple of bloodstained nickels on your pulverized face and mutter, here sucker, have some bus fare, and then they cackle and stomp away with all your loot and dignity and hope, back to the White House from whence they came.

Miss Morford appears to consider that income taxes started with Bush. Sorry, kiddo, it's been a lot longer than that and it helps pay for, say, AIDS research. Nudge, nudge.

That aside, this is a fascinating column if one reads between the lines a little (latex gloves recommended). Considering who Miss Morford is currently sneering at it would appear that he is - gasp! - growing old. That's right. "Them dang kids in their iPods and their Stoli and their GTA-IV. Why, in my day all we had was a quarter Ms Pac-man down at the bath-house!" I'm feelin' fer ya, Markie, but I just can't reach ya. Thank God.

Read it again and enjoy what's really going on here. Morford is sounding like your Uncle Fudd trying to do hip-hop. It's painful. It's embarrassing. It's fun.

[MarkL]

You've been continuously mugged and beaten and robbed blind for the past seven years straight,

That's funny... For a second I thought that he was talking about paying taxes, which is how I'm being "mugged and beaten and robbed blind."

I should have known better.

Mark

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Don't know about that brand but a tankless hot water heater is wonderful.

You get all the hot water you want when you want it but you aren't continually heating 40 gallons of water all the time so your gas bill goes down.

If you get the bigger unit you can run the washer, the dishwasher and take a hot shower all at the same time.